An address such as hello@yourname.org looks professional, is easy to share, and stays with you if you change email providers. Here is how to set one up.
1. Choose an email provider
Your domain does not include an inbox. You connect it to an email service. Options include the business plans offered by major webmail providers, privacy-focused providers, and the email included with many hosting plans. Compare price per user, storage, spam filtering, and whether it works well on your phone.
2. Add your domain to the provider
The provider will ask you to verify that you control the domain, usually by adding a TXT record to your DNS. Copy it exactly, save it, and click verify.
3. Point your MX records
MX records tell the world where to deliver email for your domain. Your provider gives you one or more MX values, each with a priority number. Add them to your DNS and remove any old MX records that point elsewhere.
4. Protect your domain from spoofing
Three records help receiving servers trust your messages and reject forgeries. Your provider supplies the values.
- SPF is a TXT record listing the services allowed to send email for your domain.
- DKIM adds a digital signature to your messages. You publish a public key as a TXT or CNAME record.
- DMARC is a TXT record at
_dmarc.yourname.orgthat tells receivers what to do with messages that fail the checks, and where to send reports. Many people start with a monitoring policy (p=none) and tighten it later.
Without these records, your messages are much more likely to land in spam, and anyone could more easily pretend to be you.
5. Create your addresses
Create the mailboxes you need. Many people start with one personal address, such as maria@, and one shared address, such as hello@ or info@, often as an alias that delivers to the same inbox.
6. Test
Send messages to and from a different account, and check they arrive in the inbox rather than spam. Many providers include a tool to check your DNS settings.